Interpretation of Radium

Whether Wells s novel affected Soddy as much as Soddy s Interpretation of Radium influenced Wells is impossible to determine, but Soddy s move into monetary theory in the postwar period was, in some ways, already implicit in his alchemical vision of the new science.8 Modem alchemy—the atomic science of transmutation, with all its alchemical connections to spiritual systems, gold, and even greed—that Soddy had been exploring in his pre-War writings may have helped turn this Nobel Prize-winning chemist into what was commonly called a money crank. ... 

In Soddy s 1908 Interpretation of Radium lectures, he laid out the current state of knowledge about radiation and radium, discussing with scientific specificity (but in relatively accessible terms) the history of the last decade of discoveries in radioactivity and current interpretations of them. But the lectures and book concluded with more imaginative, less strictly scientific speculations about the uses of such knowledge and the powers of the energy released by atomic transmutation. Returning to the subject of alchemy, Soddy noted ... 

Walling, has discovered processes for releasing atomic energy, bombarding beryllium with alpha rays, and imagines an array of idealistic and even spiritual results of atomic energy that were much the same as those elaborated by Soddy in the Interpretation of Radium twenty-five years earlier ... 

This passage was repeated with little alteration in the 1912 and 1920 editions of The Interpretation of Radium, the change being to change the nature of the catastrophe from a single mistake to some unknown reason. Sclove notes that Soddy s belief in an earlier atomic age wavered in later years (175). 

The Interpretation of Radium Being the Substance of Six Free Popular... 

Soddy, F. The complexity of the chemical elements. Scientific Monthly 5, 451 (1917). The Interpretation of Radium. 4th Ed. G. R Putnam s Sons, New York 1922. The Story of Atomic Energy, Nova Atlantis, London 1949. 

He published several books, including Radioactivity (1904), The Interpretation of Radium (1909), The... 

Soddy wrote and spoke about the practical apphcations of radioactivity and envisioned nuclear energy as the basis for an advanced civihzation and as a solution to the increasing depletion of natural resources. His book The Interpretation of Radium (1914) inspired H. G. Wells to write his science fiction novel The World Set Free (published the same year). 

H. G. Wells thought Nature less trustworthy when he read similar statements in Soddy s 1909 book Interpretation of Radium. My idea is taken from Soddy, he wrote of The World Set Free. One of the good old scientific romances, he called his novel it was important enough to him that he interrupted a series of social novels to write it. Rutherford s and Soddy s discussions of radioactive change therefore inspired the science-fiction novel that eventually started Leo Szilard thinking about chain reactions and atomic bombs. 

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